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SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

nasa.gov

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Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#41

Post by eupharis »

Arjuna wrote: post #36
joshuahedlund wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

"Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?" "Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle? A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission." [1] [1] http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl... "The average price of a full-up NASA Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Stati…

Cost per kilo to Low Earth Orbit (LEO):

  Space Shuttle: $19, 824 per kg [1]

  Soyuz-2: $5,333 per kg [2]

  Falcon 9: $5,167 per kg [3]
At the moment, the Falcon 9 is not that much cheaper than the Soyuz.

Elon Musk's talk of $1,100 per kg lies in the future. SpaceX is hoping that making all the parts reusable and its new Falcon Heavy (Which will carry five times as much as the Falcon 9) will cause launch costs to plummet like a stone.

Which is not to say SpaceX isn't amazing. It has been launching rockets for that past 6 years. Whereas Soyuz has been the 40 year work of a superpower. Achieving parity is a wonder in and of itself.

[1] $450 million cost per launch / 22,700 kg payload

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl...

[2] $40 million / 7,500 kg payload

http://myblog.rsynnott.com/2010/03/rocket-fuel-not-as-expens...

[3] $54 million / 10,450 kg payload

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php

Edit: Grammar, formatting

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#42

Post by kmm »

StevenRayOrr wrote: post #34

I get caught up in the romantics of this. We could be explorers again like Magellan or Shackleton, this time charting the vast, infinitude of the stars. We could see planets and moons that are but specks in a telescope. It has been so easy, over the last few years, to become jaded with politics and our society and the minutia of technology. SpaceX gets me excited about "the future (of our species)" which hasn't happe…

Doesn't it bother you that you won't be the one doing the exploring? I'm insanely envious of these people and sometimes I wish manned spaceflight would end. Standing on the Moon sounds like the most amazing experience I can imagine and it pains me that I won't ever get there and even if I would, I would just be the umpteenth tourist, littering up the place.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#43

Post by eupharis »

mikeash wrote: post #31
jerf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that window is non-zero, it is also very, very small.

I'm sure. It's just that the urge to CYA for a unique $100 billion object has got to be huge.

Overseeing the dawn of a new era of human spaceflight? Cutting through the mountain of technical hurdles and bureaucratic processes to get this actually done?

Fuck CYA. There is no CYA here. There is success, and there is failure. As it should be.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#44

Post by mikeash »

eupharis wrote: post #43
mikeash wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure. It's just that the urge to CYA for a unique $100 billion object has got to be huge.

Overseeing the dawn of a new era of human spaceflight? Cutting through the mountain of technical hurdles and bureaucratic processes to get this actually done? Fuck CYA. There is no CYA here. There is success, and there is failure. As it should be.

I fully approve of what they're doing, I'm just somewhat surprised that old, stodgy, NASA was able to get past their ingrained CYA instincts.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#45

Post by ANH »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #33
InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

I'll add my voice to the chorus of folks gushing about how awesome this is, but here's a list of reason on just WHY this is so awesome. Straight off the top, this is only the third launch of the Falcon 9. This rocket alone represents a dramatic disruption of the entire orbital launch industry, offering to make launch of both humans and cargo cheaper than it's ever been by an incredibly wide margin. If this rocket pro…

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

In the press conference about an hour ago, I think I heard Gwynne Shotwell (President, SpaceX) say Russia offers a seat for $63M, whereas SpaceX will be offering NASA Dragon launches in the $30M range. A Dragon holds seven astronauts.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#46

Post by nightski »

cryptoz wrote: post #7

I can't wait! SpaceX is the most amazing company right now. They're work is the exact opposite of the trivial-to-start social networking apps, the tedium of online advertising. They want to send people to Mars . And they're launching to the ISS tomorrow, the most expensive object ever built by humanity. They have the world's trust. They have the world's best engineers. And they have some intense ambition and lots of…

I'd love to work there. Just had a friend interview in fact (didn't quite make it but enjoyed the experience). The only concern is salary and working conditions. I mean I get the impact of the work and it is true that is by far the most important consideration for any engineer. But I have worked for smaller companies before where salary was well below average and there were 70-80-90 hour weeks. It was incredibly demoralizing. It would be nice to hear that isn't how SpaceX is.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#47

Post by InclinedPlane »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #33
InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

I'll add my voice to the chorus of folks gushing about how awesome this is, but here's a list of reason on just WHY this is so awesome. Straight off the top, this is only the third launch of the Falcon 9. This rocket alone represents a dramatic disruption of the entire orbital launch industry, offering to make launch of both humans and cargo cheaper than it's ever been by an incredibly wide margin. If this rocket pro…

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

First, let's take the Shuttle off the table, which is no longer in service and was by far the most expensive launch vehicle in extensive service in history.

Right now, the price of a Falcon 9 launch is around $50mil, this translates to $4.8/g to LEO or $16.7/g to GTO (which is where most satellites go). This compares very favorably to the price of other western launchers (Atlas V: $18/g, Ariane 5: $21/g, Delta IV: $19.5/g to GTO and around $11-$14/g to LEO) and is very competitive compared to Russian launchers (Soyuz 2: $16.7/g, Proton M: $18.2/g to GTO or $6.4/g and $4.8/g to LEO respectively).

However, keep in mind that these are prices, which include a healthy profit margin for SpaceX, and it's no coincidence that they have priced themselves right at the level of the otherwise cheapest launch vehicles in the world (since that maximizes their profit margin). Also keep in mind that as SpaceX's operations and manufacturing become more streamlined, as they amortize the fixed development costs for the Falcon 9 (which won't take long since the costs are a small multiple of the per flight revenue), as flight rate increases, and as competitive pressure to lower their profit margin increases they will be able to offer launches for considerably less than they are today, at lower prices than the Soyuz or Proton, for example.

However, this is just the beginning, as SpaceX has several development efforts in progress. The Falcon Heavy, for example, represents an incremental evolution of the Falcon 9 design, using 3 1st stage cores (instead of just one) and using a new cross-feed system to improve performance. The thing about the Falcon Heavy is that it uses slightly less than 3x as much hardware at about 2x the cost of a Falcon 9 launch but it will be able to deliver 5x the payload. This will translate into prices around $6.6/g to GTO and $2.4/g to LEO, at the high end ($4.2/g and $1.5/g at the low end). Nobody else in the world can come close to those numbers.

Also, they are working on a fully reusable version of the Falcon 9 which will reduce costs by at least a factor of 5 conservatively and perhaps as much as a factor of 100.

The maiden flight for the Falcon Heavy is slated to be next year. And they have already begun development on the core systems for the reusable Falcon (here's the 1st stage landing gear they've built for one of the test vehicles: http://s3.amazonaws.com/imgly_production/4311966/large.jpg).

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#48

Post by StevenRayOrr »

kmm wrote: post #42
StevenRayOrr wrote: post #34

I get caught up in the romantics of this. We could be explorers again like Magellan or Shackleton, this time charting the vast, infinitude of the stars. We could see planets and moons that are but specks in a telescope. It has been so easy, over the last few years, to become jaded with politics and our society and the minutia of technology. SpaceX gets me excited about "the future (of our species)" which hasn't happe…

Doesn't it bother you that you won't be the one doing the exploring? I'm insanely envious of these people and sometimes I wish manned spaceflight would end. Standing on the Moon sounds like the most amazing experience I can imagine and it pains me that I won't ever get there and even if I would, I would just be the umpteenth tourist, littering up the place.

I would absolutely love to stand on the surface of Mars or see Alpha Centauri with my own eyes, but I also know that such things are outside of my grasp. Poets and philosophers make for lousy explorers. It is enough for me that we, as a species, are reaching upward. It is enough for me that we, as a people, are overcoming chains that were not even imagined by our ancestors -- tasks so difficult, so alien that they would only describe it as touching the face of god. This is about more than the whimsical realized dream of an individual; it is the progression of the entire species.

This is how human beings are made great.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#49

Post by ebiester »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #47
joshuahedlund wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

First, let's take the Shuttle off the table, which is no longer in service and was by far the most expensive launch vehicle in extensive service in history. Right now, the price of a Falcon 9 launch is around $50mil, this translates to $4.8/g to LEO or $16.7/g to GTO (which is where most satellites go). This compares very favorably to the price of other western launchers (Atlas V: $18/g, Ariane 5: $21/g, Delta IV: $1…

Are we sure about this healthy profit? Is it possible they're just using this to try and beta their vehicle at lower cost?

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#50

Post by Zaak »

nightski wrote: post #46
cryptoz wrote: post #7

I can't wait! SpaceX is the most amazing company right now. They're work is the exact opposite of the trivial-to-start social networking apps, the tedium of online advertising. They want to send people to Mars . And they're launching to the ISS tomorrow, the most expensive object ever built by humanity. They have the world's trust. They have the world's best engineers. And they have some intense ambition and lots of…

I'd love to work there. Just had a friend interview in fact (didn't quite make it but enjoyed the experience). The only concern is salary and working conditions. I mean I get the impact of the work and it is true that is by far the most important consideration for any engineer. But I have worked for smaller companies before where salary was well below average and there were 70-80-90 hour weeks. It was incredibly demo…

This is a question I have about SpaceX. How much of their low development and launch costs depend on having large numbers of people willing to sacrifice compensation to work for such a transformative company?

I don't know anything solid about this, but I would very much like to know.

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